“Will Colombia end the cycle of violence?” WOLA
Earlier this month, the Washington Office on Latin America published a landmark report on Colombia. This week, the report´s author Adam Isacson was in Colombia.
Colombia Politics looks at WOLA´s analysis.
Isacson´s recent research for WOLA questions the prospect of a military to civilian transition in ungoverned rural Colombian areas under Colombia’s National Territorial Consolidation Plan (Plan Nacional de Consolidación Territorial) and whether such state building programs, greatly funded by the U.S., are in fact receiving the attention needed to be effective. In spite of the glacial transgression of this Stability Operation, Isacson believes that the government should remain supportive.
The PNC, whose predecessors include Plan Colombia and Plan Patriota, took off in 2004 in hopes of establishing some state presence in areas primarily under the control of armed groups. Two main leaders of this project included the then Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos and his Vice Minister Sergio Jaramillo who concluded that the PNC required support from other government agencies. It received this support.
“By 2010, US$254 million had gone into the non-military side of the Consolidation effort in the PCIM region: 75 percent of it from Colombian government sources (mainly the Defense Ministry, the Presidency and the local departmental government, with most of the rest from the U.S. government), and 65 percent of it for infrastructure.”
Yet, even in La Macarena, a poster child for the PNC having greatly decreased FARC presence, no civilian transition occurred. By 2009 Juan Manuel Santos had resigned as Defense Minister to run for president and his win, and instead of further promoting the consolidation plan, focused on land restitution and peace negotiations. As government interest in the model dwindled, so did that of civil society organizations.
From the eyes of the American Government, the lack of enthusiasm for Stability Operations lies in its high cost and high ambitions, especially during a fiscal crisis. PNC was institutionalized which brought the program to a near stop, reducing the consolidation zones from “51 municipalities in seven regions, from 100 in fifteen regions”. The current Consolidation zones include: Montes de María, Bajo Cauca and Nudo de Paramillo, southern Tolima and northern Cauca, Tumaco and Bajo Putumayo, Catatumbo, as well as La Macarena.
During an interview with Colombia Politics Isacson stated that: “in counterinsurgency there is no room for being bureaucratized”, in reference to PNC’s institutionalization, and when asked what it might take for civilians to finally take control, he mentioned “it need be non-military and without impunity, two principles that obviously have not been hallmarked of consolidation today.” But what can motivate civilians to become involved in reshaping their communities?
The initial consolidation plan did not facilitate a civilian take over due to five reasons highlighted in Isacson’s paper including: bureaucratization, the PNC’s origin in the Defense Ministry, limited budgets, a limited capacity to hire trained professionals to work in rural zones, and the varying incentives between military and professional civilians. Taking those points into consideration, a future refocus on the model could motivate civilians to not only participate, but also to trust in the government.
Therein lies an imperative point to the potential success of PNC: safety. Civilians need to feel secure. Isacson emphasizes that “citizens need to feel safe, asking and listening to what they need most”, which in this case would include providing proper infrastructure to connect individuals with a way to deliver goods or to work in towns and cities, ensuring that there wouldn’t be a land takeover, and that they have some form of job and food security.
Though these sound like basic requests, it has proven more challenging that perhaps originally thought. “What works is giving people the public good that then makes it possible for them to make a living on their own,” says Isacson, who believes that there is hope for Colombia, especially if the Peace Talks turn out favorably. A continued unified support from government and civilians won’t give armed forces the option of stepping in to fill a vacuum, and could guarantee the long awaited transition.